1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method, system, and program for dumping data in processing systems to a shared storage.
2. Description of the Related Art
In certain computing environments, multiple host systems may communicate with a control unit, such as an IBM Enterprise Storage Server (ESS)®, for data in a storage device managed by the ESS receiving the request. (IBM and ESS are registered trademarks of IBM). The control unit provides access to storage devices, such as interconnected hard disk drives through one or more logical paths. The interconnected drives may be configured as a Direct Access Storage Device (DASD), Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID), Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD), etc. The control unit may include duplicate and redundant processing complexes, also known as clusters, to allow for failover to a surviving cluster in case one fails. The clusters may access shared devices.
The control unit may include one or more processing complexes, where each processing complex includes a processor, memory and other interface hardware on a separate power boundary. The processing complex may include multiple logical partitions (LPARs), each executing a separate instance of the operating system code and each functioning as an independent system, sharing the same processing complex hardware. In certain systems, a separate set of storage devices, such as one or more hard disk drives, is provided for each logical partition for use by the logical partition to dump volatile data in the event of a power failure or other failure event. In the event of such failure, each logical partition would write its volatile data to its separate dump storage device while a battery maintains power to the system for a finite time. The dedicated storage device for each logical partition may include redundant hardware to store redundant copies of the volatile data for the logical partition assigned to that storage device. When the power is resumed, the data stored or “dumped” to the storage device for the logical partition is read back into the logical partition so operations may resume.